A Far Cry
by ragingpussy
Summary: Snapshots of Ike and Kyle. Growing up and apart but unable to disentangle. Ike all the while unable to resist wondering, no matter how painfully: why? [Updates every Sunday night unless otherwise specified. Rated for language/sexual content/themes. Appreciate and will consider all reviews/critique.]
1. Chapter 1

Age 12.

Ike plucked the red corded receiver with a clammy hand, gritted his teeth and swallowed hearing the soft click as it separated from the handset. The dial-tone rattling too-loud against his skull and he flinched at what he couldn't help resenting as a challenge. He punched clumsily with a narrow index finger that caved at the first knuckle the numbers he knew by heart but not by hand.

It was midnight by the time Sheila and Gerald retired which meant by the time Ike clutched the tolling phone to the side of his head, folded into the compartment under the laundry room table, it was already past 02:00 Kyle-Time. Kyle was still awake of course.

" _Hi this is Kyle Broflovski—"_

"Kyle!"

"— _can't make it to the phone right now. Leave a message and I'll—try to call you back I guess."_

The voicemail greeting was new. Kyle intoned the whole thing at a growl, only the end of his own name overwhelmed by the staleness of auto-introduction, a click of the tongue ill-concealed by a sharp inhale at the pause between "I'll" and "try." The words felt strange against Ike's ears, the hoarse timbre of the recorded voice distressingly familiar but lacking its customary vehemence. He called again, to no avail. He wrought the fastenings of his half-zip fleece between his fingers, squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, called until the voicemail greeting wasn't new anymore.

He let his head fall back against the wall. It all was dismally frustrating.

"Ike?"

Gerald speaking.

Ike started, slammed down the phone and shoved the handset behind him against the wall. The phone cords were attached to the same power strip as the digital clock and old Omron blood pressure monitor and there was an awful clattering on the table surface above him. His pulse revved and he snatched his ankles sticking out from underneath the desk, drew his knees against his chest kind of helplessly. He watched Gerald's slipper-clad feet approach, hairy shins pale against a burgundy bathrobe. Gerald lowered himself, a hand on the desk anchoring his [awkward] squat.

"What are you doing down here Ike?"

The phone set, an unfortunate shade of red that contested Sheila's lipstick, stuck out from behind Ike's back. He thrust the thing away, scowled. There hung between them one of those mutually-expectant silences between diffidents during which Ike glared flush-cheeked at his feet and Gerald drummed his fingers on the desktop and tried not to make any gestures that might intimate his wanting to speak.

"Kyle's not coming home," Ike finally blurted. Accusatory.

"I know."

"Why is Mom like that. What does she always have to, like—" Ike broke off, threw his elbows over his knees, suddenly fighting the need to ventilate rapidly "— _antagonize_ him like that?"

Fact was he could think of descriptors far more vile than 'antagonize' but he didn't use them because he had, in recent years, developed an auxiliary adoptee-conscience that gave him a regarding-surrogate-progenitors deference that somewhat exceeded average. Gerald released from his crouch to slump against the washing machine next to Ike and rubbed the strip of mustache under his nose with the side of his index finger.

"You know how those two are, Ike."

"But she can at least not be such a bitch that she makes Kyle not even wanna come home for winter break!"

Oops. Gerald exhaled lengthily through his nose, itched the side of his nostril with a crooked finger.

"I know kiddo. But it's not your mother's fault ok? Kyle's—"

"It is!"

"—it really is not Ike, ok? Now let's get you to bed." Gerald stood, offered a hand to Ike still skulking under the desk. "Kyle's not gonna pick up anyway, he's probably—"

"He's _not_ asleep."

"Don't be petulant Ike."

"Well I wanna see him!" Ike shouted. "It's his first year at college and he's supposed to be all homesick and stuff and—and—wanna come back to see us and—"

He was beginning to swipe furiously at his eyes, thin visage wrought with vexation, and when Gerald bent to shush him, grasped him by his wrists—"Don't yell Ike, you're gonna wake your mother!"—he reeled from the touch, smoldering from beneath his skin with a curious, inexplicable shame. He hid his face against his shoulder drawing hitched breaths through bared teeth as Gerald drew him gently from under the table.

"Come on, up you go—watch your head—thatta boy."

Gerald half-carried Ike upstairs, passed his own and Sheila's cracked door seeping lamplight, the sliver of light through which Ike glimpsed Sheila's plump form curled around a towel-wrapped hot water bottle, brows flickering fitfully even in slumber. Ike wrenched himself away from Gerald, scrambled down the dark hallway to his own room and sank down against the door as he closed it, listened with his ear against the board for Gerald's inevitable drawn sigh, for the lamp on his parents' bedside drawer clicking off.

By 01:37 MST, or 03:37 KT, Ike was back in the laundry room huddled in the cavity between the wall and the washing machine, laptop that used to by Kyle's perched on his knees, bawling artlessly with Sheila's credit card clenched between his teeth and windshield-wiping the blur from his eyes as he scrolled through Expedia results for flights from DEN to JFK departing anytime tomorrow (12/08/yyyy) default sorted: Price (Low to High).

–––

Ike braced his shoulders against the black window, collarbones collapsed and temple against the pane, a perforated scrap reading 'Long Island Railroad' creased over his thumb. He was still harrowed from having nearly missed Jamaica, still feverish and dry-mouthed from the flight during which he'd slept on laced arms over the fold-out tray the way Filmore Anderson slept in class. Ike had hitched a ride with Wendy to the airport—Wendy lightly roasted by California sun and on her way to retrieve Stan—so barely that the operation had given him that eerie euphoria of some divine fluke. He'd almost skated into her bumper when she slammed on the breaks. Wendy gave him that quirk-browed eye-over, taking in his untied sneakers, sleepless plum-socketed eyes and cheeks throbbing pink, backpack filled with nothing, unconvinced but running too late to adhere to any agendum of accountability and so compensated by interrogating him the entire hour to Denver. He averted her queries with a montage of lies that made head ache with a sort of moral vertigo. He liked her.

Ike eyed the beady red letters glinting from the electronic headboard reading: Penn Station.

It was 18:12 p.m. Kyle-Time on 12/08—Ike's time now too—and 16:12 MST where Gerald and Sheila were, dutifully believing he was at Filmore's right then, or so he fervently hoped. He didn't have a phone. He hadn't told anyone. He clasped his hands, wrought these feelings away with a screw of his fingers.

At 18:29 Ike scrambled onto the arrival platform.

He inhaled.

Scarce, torrid air that supplied to the lungs only volume. Ike inhaled again, doubly. He found himself undersea in humans, bodies that flushed and pooled against him, against the station's yellowing tunnel walls, against the ceilings it seemed. He wrung his zipper between his hands, couldn't see over the shoulders so let himself be washed forward, stumbling wide-eyed up a flight of stairs pillowed by wool coats, scarves, handbags and hair. A fur collar that brushed against his parched lips. He thought of Kyle.

The tributary of commuters released Ike into a rumbling concourse, the reverberations of which Ike felt in his chest and spine, and as he tried wide-eyed to accept it all he stumbled, gasping atonement when he realized he'd flat-tired the most elite-looking foot he'd ever seen—a camel-suede wingtip oxford with a striated sole—not even to be spared a moment's fuck-you glance.

Ike recoiled against the side of a ticket machine panting, clutching the collar of his dusty-blue fleece with his slush-stained ski jacket hanging off his shoulders, too stunned by it all to even tell which the hell way was up. More faces flashing by, more permutations of features than he could ever have imagined even existed on the blue planet Earth. Trench hems and briefcases and skirts slapped across his knees, winter wraps and purse straps his face, and he closed his eyes, tried to withdraw into himself so he could think. Kyle had been here. Kyle had done this. Stifling his dismay that this was the jungle that had eaten Kyle, Ike slapped a hand over his trembling mouth and tried to inhale through his nose. He sucked and flushed stagnant air until he was dizzy.

When he opened his eyes, he straightened his little twelve-year-old shoulders and readied himself to cut across the current.

–––

It was snowing hard on the streets—not as cold as home but a hell ton windier—and Ike arrived at Kyle's dorm a couple hours later with whipped cheeks and numb lips that made it hard to enunciate as he confronted the housing sentry. She was black and plump and reminded him of Chef except plus a weave and minus amiability.

"Sir— _sir_ —I can't let you in without ID."

Were it not for Ike's mounting agitation he would've found it funny she called him 'sir' even though he was twelve and looked it.

"But I'm here to see my older brother. He lives here, his name is Kyle Broflovski and—"

"Campus policy. Sorry."

"Well can—can you call him for me?" he asked hopefully, wringing his hands. The woman scanned him, decided he looked innocent enough and her day shitty enough, yanked a slim receiver from under her desk and cocked a brow at him for the number. It was a terrible silence waiting, the her weaving the phone cord between acrylic-nailed fingers, him standing pigeon-toed and picking at the teeth of his zipper.

"He's not there."

Ike's fingers closed around the front of his jacket.

"Ah. Y-yeah. I'll just—I'll just wait then," he whispered, turning away. He felt her eyes on his back but he didn't care. He led himself to corner of the entrance hall, let himself sink down. For the first time in the day he felt he really did have to cry, really could not for the life of him hold it back for one more second, and so he let down his forehead onto his elbows folded over his knees, screwed his eyes shut and pinched his inside cheek-flesh between his molars, thinking of what a _mistake_ it all seemed. Not his impetuous little jaunt in and of itself, but more like a mistake simply existed—a massive, muddy, snaggle-tusked elephant in his ill-ventilated subleased apartment of a life but for all his twelve-year-old body was worth, so help him God, he could not say it.

He remembered Kyle leaving for college, barely five months ago, so hostile towards the departure he'd refused to accompany Sheila and Gerald in sending Kyle off, had fled the house and stayed holed in Filmore's bedroom for the weekend and when he'd finally had it in him to sulk home Kyle had long cleared out. Seeing Kyle's drawers gutted and mattress stripped, closet empty but for a few jackets that didn't fit anymore, presumably designated for Ike's later use, Ike had fallen into a fever, folded onto his knees clutching his elbows, his arms clamped over his vitals a futile surrogate for the ambient pressure that was Kyle, _gone_.

It didn't seem to Ike then that there was anywhere else in the world outside South Park. Oh people said there was, but when they arrived home again on their old front doorsteps, they had changed, and the boys and girls who left the town were gone forever.

These were the sorts of grandly depressive thoughts that mulled in Ike's brain until exhaustion conquered him and he crumpled, drooling mildly, against the dirty wall. He didn't stir as the sentry, fifteen minutes past the end of her shift at 21:17 KT draped her uniform vest over him before donning a long overcoat and departing into the blinking, roaring night.

–––

Kyle wasn't even in. It was past midnight by the time he arrived back, assaulting the doorframe trying to concuss the ice from his sneakers, soaked paper corners jutting from where he didn't care to marry his backpack zippers, red-eared and blue-lipped and looking generally pissed off. He'd just clouted the ID scanner with his wallet when he discerned in his periphery a little form against the wall, nose tucked into a swath of navy fabric. Black hair and a thin face. He knew it couldn't be, but he took a few steps towards the figure anyway, turned back over his shoulder to the graveyard-shifter, a greasy-lidded Egyptian guy.

"How long's he been here?"

"Dunno man. Since before I was."

Kyle frowned, approached, footsteps quickening of their own accord. He knelt down, fingers weak as he tugged the fabric of what appeared to be an overlarge security guard's vest away from the pale skin.

"Holy hell," he breathed. "How did _you_ get here?"

Ike roused crusty-eyed, mouth cracked and eyes narrowed reluctant to affirm, but when he saw it was indeed Kyle, rusty hair frost-flaked and celadon eyes wide as an owl's, threw his arms around Kyle's neck with a little whimper. Kyle exhaled disjointed consolations, held Ike against his chest with arms strung around and hands clutching the back of Ike's ribs. Ike, who was positive that wings would sprout from the place, that feathers would fold out from between Kyle's fingers and spring stiff. Kyle, stunned practically cross-eyed himself, cooed softly, hummed, laced his fingers under Ike's bony kid-butt and hoisted him off the floor letting Ike fasten his skinny ankles around his waist koala-like.

The security guard watched them with slack-jawed fascination, overrode the scan-gate for Kyle to carry Ike upstairs.

"Oh my god," Kyle kept mumbling, almost to himself, shaking his head with disbelief. Ike turned his head into Kyle's lips scraping over his ears as they moved, lips so chapped by winter gale their surfaces had begun to disintegrate into sharp flakes. Ike didn't really listen, just felt the hoarse murmur against his eardrums, reverberating sternum against his own. Kyle pulled Ike closer, a quiet horror dawning on him as they waited for the elevator. "I saw you spam-calling from home but I thought it was _Mom._ "

Ike only hid his face in Kyle's sleet-stiffened collar and twined his legs more tightly. That night he slept curled against the hollow of Kyle's waist, shins against Kyle's thigh, feeling so sweetly dulled like the world had been turned right-side up again and things he didn't want to think about exiled from his consciousness. Kyle swathed Ike in all the covers, let Ike sleep in the crook of his arm, let his own exhaustion-limp fingers trail beneath the fabric of Ike's T-shirt collar. On a twin oak-framed cot next to the sleeping form whose long breaths fluttered over his skin lulling him to sleep, Ike let himself be filed safely away from the scintillating, snarling city, away from railroad junctions made namesakes of irrelevant Caribbean destinations, away from loneliness.


	2. Chapter 2

Age 15.

Ike worked at Tweek Bros. Coffee.

Tweek Tweak still worked there, was 'gettin' educated' in Denver but had his classes stacked Thu-Fri and lived at home, rest of the week. Was some 'medical arrangement' that Ike used to privately deem bogus until he observed Tweek tamping crushed lorazepam into the espresso basket muttering "It's too much fucking pressure" through chattering teeth while some persnickety asswipe waited for his almond milk cappuccino with Splenda, cardamom and a shot of cum or something, which was apparently the way Tweek dealt with all orders his shitty short-term couldn't stomach.

Karen McCormick was employed there too, eighteen by then but an utter workplace nullity, usually electing to remain cross-legged on the floor playing Angry Birds on Ike's cell, reaching one-handed over her head to shimmy bagels out the backside of the pastry display to eat between levels.

It was July and Ike wondered what Kyle was doing right then.

The doorbell chimed to announce Kenny McCormick in a pilling Neymar jersey Ike recognized as Kyle's—funny—and what looked liked a pair of striped boxers sans dick slit.

"Ike baby boy." Kenny pulled a palm over the back of Ike's neck and whacked his shoulder. "Karen here?"

"Yeah. Wouldn't know it though," Ike added, scowling sidelong at said girl, who paused level 57 and rammed a last rod of donut into her mouth before springing upon her brother.

"I missed you!" she giggled, expelling a frankly morbid avalanche of crumbs over Kenny's back. He wrapped his arms over the back of Karen's ribs and spun her, and Ike watched her long legs hover out across the floor. Karen was taller than Kenny, all graduated but still wore her grad cap which knocked against the side of Kenny's head—stated purpose: "for funsies" though Ike suspected it was more like she had something to prove to herself, or something. Ike snickered. Karen wasn't bad, actually kind of hot in that greasy, split-soled Converse way Kenny had been, but there was this animalism about her that Ike believed made no one wanna fuck her, except maybe Ruby Tucker because Ruby really liked dogs and cats. Karen was kind of needy too, had to be petted, walked and groomed, and Ruby took care of all of that which confused Ike because Ruby liked cock, conspicuously.

Kenny grinned at him over Karen's shoulder.

"How's Kyle?" Ike asked. He immediately flushed, scratched the back of his head sputtering. "I mean—sorry—didn't mean to ask that first thing off. What's up with you man?"

Kenny smiled, ignored this frantic addendum. "Doesn't like to keep you in the loop, does he?"

Kenny, for all his white-trash heritage-or-rather-lack-thereof, had that millionaire smile. Still didn't talk much but had that smile. Second only to Kyle, Kenny came home the least of all them. Hadn't gone to college and it was unclear what, exactly, he was up to in life but Ike knew he did a lot of couch surfing in questionable areas of the Bronx and drew commissioned conté nudes of upper-crust twenty-somethings humping their trust funds through Greenwich Village who thought it'd be neat to have their titties commemorated on chemically-distressed parchment in sanguine tones. Authored and illustrated a strip comic about a superkid named Mysterion serialized in some mag somewhere which Ike thought was fancy. However, most notable to Ike was the fact that Kenny crashed with Kyle like half the time.

"So is he coming home sometime?"

"Dunno. I mean I asked him before I left his place, but y'know he never gives it to you straight."

Ike smiled, tried not to show how excruciatingly he agreed. He watched Kenny pry Karen from him, finger her mousy fringe which he trimmed the once a year he was in town. "So Ike, you still play hockey?"

"Yeah."

"Piano?"

"Yeah."

"You better than Kyle now?"

"Hah. Never."

Kenny smiled. His brows peaked with sympathy and he cuffed Ike softly over the ear. "I'm gonna head out now you two. Karen, I'll see you at dinner. Try to help Ike out from time to time—"

Ike snorted as Karen flashed a thumbs up.

"—and tell Tweek I say hi."

Kenny was halfway out the door before Ike blurted, "Wait." Ike twisted his fingers under the counter and heard his knuckles crack. Karen twitched her nose, lifted a clawed hand to scratch the back of her ear. "You, um—you free after dinner?"

"Yeah dude." Kenny cocked his head. "Want me to pick you up?"

Ike nodded, gave a slight grin. Karen sniffed rather audibly, finally releasing from tension a painstakingly oriented digital fowl towards a fortress of apple-green piglets with a flick of her index finger.

—

"Huckleberry is a hillbilly flavor."

Kenny nodded to acknowledge the gripe but didn't respond, busy pouring Belvedere liberally over a bare centimeter of cranberry juice in the bottom of an orange Nalgene. Ike watched Kenny set down the vodka down next to the juice, eyed the strange composition, each vessel disparaging its neighbor: the elegant frosted-glass bottle pompous next to the Ocean Spray cranberry juice juvenile, the abraded water bottle just plain homely. The vodka, Kenny had snickered, was someone's airport Duty Free purchase misappropriated. Kenny swirled the container and sipped, sucked a breath through bared teeth before answering Ike.

"Not if you're in the city it isn't. Then it's hipster. Besides, you ordered it."

Ike flashed Kenny half a smile, gave his own milkshake a swirl, watched purple froth coat the waxed wall of the cup. The two of them perched on the rim of a cardioid basin in the skate park at the edge of town over a massive tricolor-gradient facade painted by Butters back when he still used Krylon primary-color triads. Ike found it funny Butters's tag was literally 'BUTTERS'—either because he was a closet belligerent or, in Ike's personal opinion, just that much of an artard—but still no one gave a shit, probably because Butters's graffiti allowed the mayor and Barbrady to fantasize that the place was worthy of clandestine desecration.

"So you really get by out there."

"There're all sorts of odd jobs you can do." Kenny shrugged swinging his feet, watching his heels bounce off the warped red U. "I told Butters to come out East. There's a lot to paint over there. Whole scenes—montages, like—in colors that, you know, the True Value here doesn't even stock."

"Yeah?"

"Mhm. Well anyway I assumed you wanted to ask about Kyle. I know he's not just, y'know, a big bro to you."

Ike inhaled huckleberry milkshake, choked into his sleeve. He took another drink, watery-eyed, feeling an uneasy burn spread across the back of his neck despite his insides iced cold.

"W-what do you mean?"

Kenny narrowed his eyes in consideration, pressed his lips. "I mean he's not just a friend to us either." He looked for a moment like he was going to elaborate but only shook his head smiling, and Ike felt the prickling at his nape subside. "Some people just mean more. It's ok, Ike. For some people to mean more."

"There's nothing special about him," Ike blurted, feeling the burn intensify again, flush to his face. He scowled, the cup releasing a little squelch as it caved under his fingers. "He's just a prick that happens to be good at a lot of stuff and thinks he's a superior human specimen."

A wan smile. "I'll toast to that last part."

"Yeah and you know," Ike continued, mashing the inside of his elbow with his thumb, "when I was twelve I ran away to go see him—funny 'cause that's really like the last time I even talked to him—the first year, when he got into a fight with my mom and didn't wanna come back for the holidays. Well he sent me back the next morning. On a seven o'clock flight."

"Heard, yeah."

"Even you came back that time."

"That's 'cause he gave me his plane tickets."

"Oh. Well anyway, it was terrible. The city I mean. Seeing him—seeing him was good. Was nice. But I don't know how you people live out there. I practically shit myself the first time through Penn Station. Why are you over there anyway? You're not even in school."

"Honestly? Because I didn't know where else to go, and he seemed like he did."

Ike snorted. "Some great inquisitive you are."

"There's a lot more out there you know. To distract yourself with. From, things."

"Things like your sorry self you mean."

"Well what the fuck else?"

Ike glowered at this candor even though he knew he ought to appreciate it, wrought the empty cup between his hands, the vessel in torsion emitting little cardboard dying sounds. He pitched it into the basin, stood to stalk back to Kenny's dad's truck parked crooked off the side of the road before Kenny caught his wrist. Ike yelped as he lost his balance, landing hard on his ass back next to Kenny who smiled dolefully.

"Don't go yet. Shouldn't walk out on people mad, Ike-y baby."

Ike twisted his wrist away, tried not to visibly fume. Kenny extended a hand and smoothed his thumb over Ike's brow. Ike didn't look like anyone else. Hooded eyes, sharply blue, one squinting scarcely more than the other under black brows that flared at the arches. Thin lips with an exaggerated bow. Pale face framed by a lick of hair like a breaking wave. Kenny mused that, even in a city of eight million, Ike would've been hard to miss.

"I want you to tell me what the fuck is Kyle thinking. Why does he refuse to come home. Why does he never pick up his phone and why does he act like people are trying to give him an anal probe when they're just trying find out how he is."

Kenny sighed. "I can't tell you that."

"Don't fucking huff at me Kenny, like I'm some little kid. You _live_ with him—"

"I don't live with him I live near him."

"Ok but—"

"Here's the thing. I don't _know_ anything about that kid. I mean, I can tell you—" Kenny gesticulated wildly, eyes rolled searching into his brains. "—I can tell you what day he does his laundry, what aftershave he uses, what he likes to drink and who he fucks, but I don't know what the hell goes on in his head." He looked Ike square in the eye. "We were never close, you know that right? I mean, in _proximity_ , yes, but nothing more than that."

Ike ground his teeth. Kenny sighed through his nose, mixed another vodka with crandberry and drank it in one tip. He offered Ike the vodka, then the cranberry when he refused. Which he also refused.

"Don't feel so nasty Ike."

"…"

"Wanna see how you look right now? I could draw you. You look fine, but like you're feeling nasty."

"By the time you're done I'll have stopped looking nasty."

"Exactly. So just stop now. Feeling nasty sucks. Wanna know what it's like drawing nudes of young female aristocrats?"

"Not really," Ike grumbled.

"Well I'll tell you then. It's great, obviously. And in the two hours, maybe even two weeks—two months even, but that's kind of my max, depending on how much cash they wanna throw down—you get kind of obsessed with them. Like some of them are just _beauties_ Ike—"

Ike rolled his eyes and Kenny knocked him on the shoulder, drinking straight out of the frosted birch-adorned bottle by then. The thing hung naturally from Kenny's fingers, wrist slightly broken under its glass weight, and Ike wondered at this understated familiarity.

"—no listen, listen. Like, you've got memorized every fucking mole and scratch on their body, the fucking _angle_ that their tits meet their ribcage, and when they come in having just tripped on the stairs, or taken a different subway home from work, or eaten a shrimp salad instead of their usual chicken, you know man, you _know_."

"'Cause that's not fuckin' creepy or anything."

"And at the end of it all—'cause it's very intimate, in my humble-fuckin'-opinion at least—when they're tired of sitting naked on a barstool, they get up, throw some bills in your face and leave you sitting dirty-faced on the floor with your little crayons scattered everywhere. And you're like, 'But wait, I worked so hard on your portrait that when I blew my nose, my fucking _snot_ had charcoal in it—like, you can't just leave like that.' Right?"

"Kenny, where the hell is this supposed to go."

"No—Ike—sit back down. God, I don't remember ever being so skittish, especially not when I was fifteen. Oh Ike, I just turned twenty-one by the way. But anyway—thanks Ike, we all got mad wasted—anyway, when the studio door slams shut behind their fine asses, it's a sad moment for you, the artist. 'Cause it echoes, you know. But when that little echo fades, you gotta just pack up your shit and leave too."

Ike raised an eyebrow. Horrible. Kenny dipped his head between his knees, rubbed furiously at his temples and scratched his left chest. The vodka was half-removed already.

"Sweet Jesus. I think you're gonna have to drive back Ike. I hope you know how to drive."

—

Ike didn't and after a few too many flirtations with the parkway guardrail he pulled Kenny's car off into the next roadside stop, palms slick and head pounding. The gravel lot was deserted, somber in blue dusk. Ike turned to regard Kenny in the passenger seat slumped temple to windowpane, grey lids awned. Ike scowled.

"Hey."

Kenny didn't stir. Ike suddenly flamed inside, reeled back and struck Kenny hard on the shoulder. He placed another on Kenny's collar, then one on his arm, feeling puerile in his hand-heeled hits but his chest too bursting to care. When Kenny, slapped from sleep, caught Ike's wrists in the air Ike snarled, fought like an animal as Kenny pulled him over the bench seat and wrapped him into his chest. Ike when he'd been subdued began to quake and Kenny held him as he screamed into yellow jersey fabric, sobbed from the pit of his stomach the way only a fifteen-year-old kid can. Kenny gripped him, bent over the boy with his own uncut pale hair falling like willow branches, until he quieted.

He wanted to breathe sweet words but found himself at loss, for such heartbreak he had never himself felt before.

—

 **LindaLee: Thank you for your kind words, you have absolutely warmed and encouraged me. It means everything to hear that the themes I've written about resonate with you as well.**

 **Readers, please give me your opinions! I am particularly curious to know how Ike's character comes off to readers. Thanks all for your time. :)**


	3. Chapter 3

Age 5.

For a time Kyle's favorite game was "Punish Jennifer Lopez" so a fuming clusterfuck befell when, during this unfortunate while, Bebe stole back from Stan the official surrogate Lopez—a brunette Polly Pocket doll—Kyle had grown attached to. Stan, chastised beyond preservation of rational capacities, had offered that at least they still had the magnifying glass they used to sear polyvinyl-chloride legs with concentrated solar rays, had sunken so far into logical depravity as to suggest that maybe they could just incinerate Jennifer Lopez's red Hot Wheels convertible, as if a bit of property damage was a sufficient act of warfare against a hundred-million dollar Latina idol with an ass the size of two cannonballs, which Kyle indicated in shrill tones.

After predating the neighborhood Kyle and Stan decided that Ike in Shelly's old church dress would satisfy the function, Ike at that point young but not too young not to writhe at female attire being forced over his head, not that Kyle gave a shit, tearing off Ike's winter wear in upward slashes.

"I wanna wear something underneath," Ike whined.

"Well tell me Ike, do you think Jennifer _Lopez_ ever wears anything underneath? Yeah so shut up."

"Also you're gonna have to sing," Stan added, "'cause we can't take her down unless we catch her doing something bad," and the two of them hoisted Ike onto the steel bubble-top grill a.k.a. prime performance venue, his legs scuttling in air. After Ike was situated braced like some demented tennis player over the slick top, Kyle and Stan with arms searing determined that neither of them was equipped to brief Ike on any Jennifer Lopez songs so Stan went to uproot Randy's iPod from his gym bag in the garage. Stan ripped out the headphones and stuffed the thing into Ike's hand—that being how Ike found himself, at five years old, perched swaying atop a crimson Weber grill wearing a sleeveless herringbone jumper in the dead of winter, pressed against his chattering baby teeth a 2nd generation iPod that was blaring tinnily, "Waiting for Tonight." If Ike had, at that point, known that he was adopted, he would've wished he had never been adopted.

"Alright Agent Marsh let's take her down!"

"Roger that Commander Broflovski!"

Ike clutched at the fabric of Shelly's dress-front, squeaked when he heard a seam pop.

"It's over, Lopez, only retribution awaits!"

"Go back to Mexico you planet-assed witch!"

"Get the rope—I'll hold her down!"

Ike on the ground, hands sandwiched between Stan's as Kyle girdled Ike's wrists in bent-elbowed cranking motions with the rope Randy had used to strap the Christmas tree onto the top of the suburban. Kyle grasped the rope-tail and dragged Ike towards Stan's front yard oak, Ike stumbling over fabric until Stan, for fear that Shelly would see the dirt stains and later castrate him, snatched it off the ground to carry like some fugly bridal train.

"I'll do this part," Kyle announced.

"Ok! Wait, what part?"

Kyle had extracted a socket wrench from his front pocket and was knotting the rope tail around it.

"Um, what are you doing?"

Kyle took a stance and pitched the wrench over a low branch, caught it neatly on the other side. He began to take up the slack, Ike letting a little cry as the rope was yanked taut against his wrists, whimpering as the pressure increased and he felt himself plucked into air, legs flailing, Kyle tugging with his entire kiddush weight and a look of intense concentration punctuated by exerted huffs.

"Kyle? Dude?"

"What? He's not gonna die. Little kids are like rubber."

Kyle anchored the rope tail around the tree trunk and stood back to beam at his handiwork, bony fists bouncing at his sides as if clutching two little joysticks. It was a funny gesture both Kyle and Stan performed when they were excited and that neither grew out of for quite some time. Ike dangling from a tree by bound wrists looked kind of like a puppet, what with Shelly's dress falling way past his feet, and Stan clamped a good hard pinch over the bridge of his nose the way he did whenever the moment's fuckery transcended verbal expression.

"Now you've really got coming, Lopez!" Kyle shouted, voice inflecting wildly with glee. "After all this time. After 'Jenny From the Block,' 'Let's Get Loud,' 'Ain't It Funny'—which it fuckin' ain't!—we will have our vengeance!"

From nowhere he brandished a jump rope, folded it over—Stan moaning, " _Aw_ , dude," pressing flattened hands against his brow bones like blinders—and began leaping to thrash Ike in mid-air, Ike swinging to and fro under the tree.

"How do you like _that_ , Lopez?"

Ike shut his eyes and clenched his teeth, tried to draw his legs up to his chest but he was too weak. His lower abdomen burned tight and hot and he suddenly needed to pee. He squeezed his knees together as hard as he could.

"Lopez?"

Kyle, with a hand on his hip.

"Ike you're supposed to scream and stuff. You're supposed to be Jennifer Lopez and we just kidnapped you right off your tour and you're just hanging there like a flaccid penis?"

Ike blinked, legs trembling from tension.

"Whatever Stan, let's go. Ike's being stupid."

"Uh, dude, don't you wanna take him down?"

"Maybe in a second. My mom's not home until six today."

Kyle stalked away, Stan in tow but unable to keep from glancing back every few steps, and Ike panicked. To see Kyle turn his back, Kyle getting smaller and smaller obscured by the blossoming snow, the green of his hat and the red of his hair bleeding into each other, his figure fading as if departing this charted world to enter a next—Ike screamed. He cried, he _howled_ , his whole body wracked forcing the wail from his mouth, screwed his eyes shut and let the back of his head throb with reverberation.

Kyle whipped around, snatched Stan's wrist and hauled the two of them stand bewildered under Ike flailing feet.

"I'm Jennifer Lopez! I'm Jennifer Lopez! I'm—"

Ike fell silent, gasping. Kyle was beaming from the ground. Ike's lids sank heavy and when he felt the sting of jump rope against his legs he yelped. "So you concede, huh!" Kyle shouted, revitalized. "So you concede that you, with your rise to dirty fame—"

Kyle smacked the jump rope again over Ike's knees and Ike shrieked dutifully, writhing in his best enactment of the pure agony only someone packing a warhead of an ass and hanging from her wrists could ever know.

"—having compromised the calibre of melodic and lyrical expression for your own commercial gains—"

Stan was beginning to glance nervously around the street lest anyone glimpse the travesty occurring in his front yard which he served knowing witness to.

"—with your shitty lyrics you didn't even write—"

"Oh my _god_!"

The voice of Sheila Broflovski. Kyle froze.

A car door slammed so hard it produced a bell-tone.

Stan's front yard was a spectacle then—Sheila belting censure, Kyle in that mixed state between fear and combustion shrieking irrelevant things like "You weren't supposed to be home until six!" and "Why are you at Stan's house anyway!" and "You never pick me up, I _always_ walk home!" and "Maybe that's what you get for always making me take Ike out when I don't want to!" It was Stan who unstrung Ike in the periphery of the scene as Sheila slapped Kyle clear across the mouth as if to sever by ripping, like a loose thread, the tendrils of some nasty remark Ike did not clearly hear.

Kyle was doled a nutritious serving of protracted grounding that night, plus no Terrance and Phillip for a month, and was mulling face-down on his bed when Sheila opened his bedroom door procuring a re-clothed Ike for reception of the Sincere Apology, to which Kyle relinquished only an artisanally-crafted replica through clenched teeth.

"That's better Kyle. Now I'll leave you and Ike alone for a bit so you can make up. Be _nice_."

Kyle's bedroom was dark and when Sheila left the door barely clicked against the lock jamb before retreating to hover a hair from the frame. Kyle could see through the crack a sliver of glow from the hallway bathroom. It was Ike who spoke first, consternation evident in the way he twisted the collar of his pajamas between his fingers.

"Why'd she hit you?"

"'Cause I told her you liked it."

"Oh."

Ike was perplexed by this, tried to revisit the moments that seemed so long ago, but he was unable to disprove the statement. All he could recall was Kyle's voice in peals of delight, the verve behind crinkling green eyes almost tangible, and an irrepressible need to take a piss.

"I have to pee," Ike blurted.

"Then go pee."

"I can't."

"…ok? And why are you telling me?"

"I dunno."

"Well I dunno either Ike, fuck off."

And Kyle would've given Ike the finger and flopped back onto his bed if not beguiled by a flicker of hallway light in the corner of his eye. He frowned, rubbed his eyes, but when it flickered again for sure he was overcome with bright new vengeance.

Kyle grinned madly, fingers folding into fists at his sides, cleared his throat, shut his eyes and bellowed, "I _told_ you he liked it!"

He leapt onto his mattress, triumphant, pounding springs into frame as he jumped, shrieking "I told you, I told you, I _told_ you!"—Ike gazing dumbfounded—and all Sheila, intoxicated with shock, really had to retort with was a piercing expletive of her son's name, "Kyle Broflovski!"


	4. Chapter 4

Age 16.

Ike graduated high school at sixteen, _not—_ as he made damn sure everyone knew—because he was smart or anything, but because Sheila, weary of infant-surveilling and—in Ike's personal theory—perhaps faintly wishful that adoptions were morally in addition to legally rescindable, had exiled him to kindergarten when he was only three.

On the afternoon of June 11th 16:37 MST, 18:37 KT, two hours and twenty-three minutes before the ceremony would commence, Ike found himself supine under the gymnasium bleachers, mandibles alternating between a wad of A&W Hubba Bubba and a cigarette smoked half a centimeter to the butt. The gym dark but for the emergency light and a triangular haze spilling over the floor from the fire door propped open, motes of dust glinting in the beam that just illuminated Ike's pinky finger.

Five rows of chairs waited twelve abreast in the dank arena beyond.

Ike had chosen not to linger at home watching Sheila root frantically for her grandmother's heirloom occasion-pearls or Gerald peruse through channels glancing furtively about lest his wife or son find him lingering a tick too long on the National Geographic dolphins documentary. Ike flushed a long plume from his lips. He didn't suppose he should smoke in the gym. He didn't suppose he should smoke anywhere. Ike reached between his teeth and pinched a half-wad of Hubba Bubba, observed a trailing cord of mucilage form and thin as he drew his hand gingerly skywards. He pinned the tail against the underside of the bleacher above him with his thumb and watched the golden thread pulsate in the summer breeze, felt it tickle his bottom lip. He fished the other knot from his mouth, adhered it to the cigarette butt and girded the butt pig-in-a-blanket style with the cord of gum until it, too, was secured to the bleacher. A bit of ash fluttered onto his forehead as he admired his contribution to society. He wished it would burn.

"Hey Broflovski."

Ike squinted at the doorway—a silhouette swathed in summer glow whom he could not identify. "Who's that," he croaked.

"Filmore."

Ike struggled to right himself, hit his head on the bleacher and hissed at the sting. Filmore shifted foot to foot, hands rammed into pockets unwittingly forcing his pants crotch way low.

"So. It's um… It's funny neither of us are class president." Filmore played with the hem of his dress shirt, tried to yank a loose thread but it slid through his fist.

Ike raised an eyebrow. "It's funny you remember that."

"Well I was five and you were three. That's like right on the edge of infantile amnesia."

"Mm."

"Those are some fugly shoes you're wearing," Filmore observed solemnly. "Are you gonna wear those at the thing?" Ike's sneakers of a dubious hue, crusted in spring mud, were beginning to rift uppers from soles like Karen McCormick's, and indeed he was planning on wearing them at 'the thing.'

"Sorry is there something you want?"

"No, no. Just, congratulations is all."

Ike made a strange face.

"To you I mean," Filmore added frantically. "Not as in 'I want your congratulations.' God what kind of asshole would I have to be to—" He broke off, cleared his throat, clawed a nonexistent itch at the back of his head.

Ike rubbed an eye with the heel of his hand, kind of hurting as grains of dirt from the gym floor stuck to his palm were ground into his face. "Good 'cause I wasn't gonna give you any," he said stiffly. A few bitter recollections resurfaced in his mind and he scowled. "Actually, on second thought, maybe I will. Congratulations on being able to graduate Filmore, I'm really fucking impressed."

Filmore flinched but did not retort and Ike snickered; that archaic rip, endorsed by the veritable wisdom that there was only so much one could hope for out of school without gracing it with his or her presence from time to time, never burned unless it was half-true. Not that Ike in bitter musing wouldn't have, on any school day of his life, willfully undergone minor amputation to be wherever Filmore Anderson was when removed from South Park's frankly tragic youth academia. "You're valedictorian," Filmore continued. "That's cool, Ike."

"In a class of sixty kids? Please."

"Still plenty good."

"Honestly, who gives a shit. Other than my mom. And if his workday has elapsed Level Shitty, maybe my dad. And maybe my estranged—" Ike's breath caught in his throat and he gulped painfully in a way that would undoubtedly have to be restored later via discreet burp "—yeah."

"J-Jesus."

"Sorry. I'm—thanks. I um, didn't write a speech."

"Really? Wow. That's… unexpected. Of you I mean."

"Yep."

"Well, um…" Filmore looked rather at a loss, shoulders bowed and lips ironed, Ike just about to sneer when Filmore's eyes flared and he shark-finned his hands in a clap: "I'll write one for you." Filmore's backpack struck a metallic thump as it was shed to the floor—"I always bring this with me," he explained offhandedly—and split along a snarling brass zipper to procure, amid various paraphernalia of the incriminating variety and a distinct herbal incense that made Ike suddenly wish for better days, a Kleenex and ballpoint pen. Ike watched Filmore write against the gym wall, tailored slacks twitching neatly at his heel, and Ike felt the urge to plant his foot in the crack of Filmore's 90-10% wool-silk-blend-covered ass and ram him into a wall so that his testicles shattered and would have to be painstakingly collected in Mr. Garrison's pink dustpan.

"A'right. Here." Filmore presented the thing like a flower.

Ike scanned the tissue stone-faced. "It's okay."

Filmore frowned.

"It's okay," Ike repeated, "It's just it's really—heartfelt. There's no way I could get something like that out. Probably piss myself."

"You um—you like it?"

"It's _okay_ ," Ike assured for the third time and with flashing teeth. "I mean I don't have anything better."

"Well just—" Filmore hockeyed his backpack across the floor with an slick foot extended, plucked it to rifle through the interior folds "—here, just take this." He pitched Ike a miniature Tupperware whose contents rattled in flight, same dainty functionally-void Tupperware as the type Sheila purported just perfect for lunch-packing oil and vinegar to dress salads that would never be made, much less eaten.

"What's this?"

"Nothing—ADD stuff," he conceded to Ike's blank stare. "It'll just make you think life is a really, really good idea."

"'Cause it's that obvious I don't. Man, bet you wish attention wasn't the only deficit you—"

"No I bought it from someone. Or you can take this." Filmore flipped Ike an old Altoids tin filled with what Ike presumed to be Not Altoids. Ike thumbed the lid to disclose a scattering of lemon yellow buttcracked rounds. At the sight he felt suddenly cold, short of breath.

"They'll just chill you out."

Ike swallowed, felt the itch of sweat at his nape.

"Dude, you ok? Sorry I didn't mean—you don't have to have any, I was just—"

"How many?"

Filmore hesitated before putting up two fingers to Ike who pressed his thumb into the metal carton, licked off the couple that stuck to his thumb-pad and was about to swallow them dry before Filmore slammed a plastic water bottle into his hand, a scarred Nalgene just like Kenny's but blue. Ike smiled, let it reach his eyes. He waved the tattooed Kleenex in acknowledgement, the gesture feeling kind of retarded like fluttering a hankie but he didn't really care.

"Thanks Filmore. You're still a dickwad but this I appreciate."

As Ike displayed the Kleenex taut between his fingers it ripped, and the audience gave an obligatory chuckle assuring that they found his introductory folly a splendid garnish of trendy candid wit and not evidence of irreparable daftness and most certainly not of severe intoxication. He patted the two shreds over the podium like if he mimed just right the thing would actually adhere.

"There," he murmured, cringing at his magnified voice. "Ok everyone. So for my speech, I decided to write an open letter to you all. So um—"

Ike's gave his head a quick, hard shake.

"—sorry. Alright, here goes. Dear South Park, the town that raised me from the little boy I was to the big, madly ripped man I am now—"

A wave of snickers through the almost-graduates and Ike sucked a deep gust of air, the speakers rattling when he exhaled.

"—First of all, to Chef: If, in my entire time as a South Park student, I learned nothing else, I learned from Chef that there's nothing out there as warm, savory, and comforting as a good Salisbury steak—"

The audience cooed and there were a few hoots from the student sector.

"—other than a good—"

Ike's eyeballs felt languid as if looking in two marginally distinct directions and he blinked them a good squeeze as in to like reboot them or something.

"—lick of pussy."

Dissonant tremors emanated from the crowd, chuckles shimmering against the throaty hum of hand-muffled murmurs punctuated by requisite mortified gasping from a couple parents in the stands. A few anally resolute blankfaces whom Ike grinned toothily at, left eyelid feeling rather heftier than the right. He squinted further into the audience to fixate on his parents and sitting between them… Stan. Ike quivered his fingers at Stan who waved back but not without a furtive glance at the Broflovskis on either side of him who anxiously replicated the gesture. Ike leaned heavily into the podium which lurched a little, the Kleenex sticking as he tried to iron it with clammy hands.

"To Mr. Garrison, my fourth grade teacher but most notably my kindergarten teacher for a memorable month, you are still my favorite teacher because you taught me the only useful things I learned in my entire general education career: how to put a condom on—"

Ike swayed dangerously. A light at the back of the gym flared and went out, leaving the neon EXIT sign shrouded in darkness and curiously luminous.

"—someone else—"

The gym was deathly silent.

"—with only my mouth." Ike looked up, swallowed dryly and licked his lips. "Here, I'll show you. It's kind of like—" He bent and fitted his lips over the microphone head, tried to lower down but couldn't contain the thing. "—Sorry you guys," he choked, his own electronically-distorted voice received by the microphone halfway submerged in his mouth punching his ear drums from mounted speakers, observing from the corner of his eyes a slew of parents grimacing from behind clapped palms, "it doesn't really fit but you get the picture. Feels good on my mouth though," he snickered before withdrawing.

"And also, a catalog of tried-and-true—"

He yawned in a manner that could only be perceived debaucherous, slapped himself briskly on the cheeks with both hands like that would fucking help the situation.

"—sex positions. Which I will now recite from memory. Or—well—I have it written down but I wrote it from memory. Is what I meant to say. Sweet _Jesus_ you people. So here goes: missionary—gotta start there right?"

The class, ten minutes ago seated pertly clad in wingtips and buffed pumps peeking from beneath starched poly-sheen gowns, emitted rabid noises far beyond the vaguely humanoid.

"—doggystyle, piledriver, the filthy sanchez, hot carl, the wrap-around butt grab—" he frowned at the tissue trying to make out a word that looked like it read 'ravioli.'

"—r-reverse cowgirl—"

A massive rumbling emanated from the bleachers and Ike narrowed his eyes to observe the left-seated crowd parting as if sundered by divine hand, spotted clambering down a rotund figure topped by a flaming hive of no meager volume, elbows flapping chicken-winged with each descending step, stout flared heels clanging against steel—sounds which made his heart rev, and he glanced down at the packing of unread blue text scrawled on the napkin and became suddenly frantic, speech accelerating rapidly towards its enunciative limits: "—hot lunch, donkey punch, glass bottom boat, fish-eye, chili dog—"

Sheila struck the floor, bright and dangerous.

"—Indian handstand—no—no, no—"

The forward-seated graduates twisted back, strained in their seats to glimpse what Ike recoiled in such terror from. Ike's fingers white, ensnared almost suffocatingly in the pleats of his polyester grad-gown.

"—don't you come up here Mom. I'm not done yet. I'm not—"

He backed away from the podium flapping his hands in fire-fanning motions as if trying to seat some small, shrill, insufferably-yappy jumping dog, a gesture which was not lost on Quaid who screamed with mirth sounding honestly kind of like a donkey, even Firkle the row behind him snorting into pale, heavily-adorned knuckles. Ike positively reeling away then, wheezing, "Sit! Sit!" as the gymnasium roared, roared until Ike stumbling backwards treaded over his untied sneaker lace and fell off the edge of the ceremonial platform catching mid-plunge against the decorative velvet backdrop, the frame of which collapsed with a mighty crash.

Ike when they extricated him from the curtain was unconscious and therefore unable to witness Filmore Anderson eyeing him raptly as his exhausted form was collected by Stan and Gerald—Filmore erect in his flimsy folding chair, unblinking in the utmost chrome-eyed adoration.


	5. Chapter 5

Kyle's first serious sexual companion, as of January his sophomore year, was Bebe Stevens. Kyle had been craving pussy in that nauseous way inflamed by escapism and Bebe still wanted to wear his ass as a hat, plus appreciated that he allegedly liked her for more than just the fact that she was the only beach-body so far inland. Both of these intel were released publicly, the former in 4th grade and the latter six years later spat across plastic lunch trays at Kenny who simply shrugged.

Ike when he secretly watched them fuck, which was frequently, did so with such a cocktail of feelings frothing within him he felt quite literally intoxicated. Some sentiments originated from that part of him so weighted with blood it defied gravity inside his hand-me-down T&P pajamas. Others were of less certain affiliation and far less euphoric, and Ike when he felt them beginning to simmer would lace his arms over his chest and grit his teeth. His eyelashes blinking so rapidly would catch against the door panels. This was before Ike started beating off, after which there was no longer much discrepancy at all, just searing darkness and his forehead pressed against closet-door slats slick with his own breath. Kyle never opened his closet which was glutted with an almost two-decade long accumulation of junk.

It wasn't, to Ike, like watching the people in the videos, was the thing. Video sex to Ike felt clean, at least in ways not with regard to medically-speaking, commerical and clean, filmed and packaged for distribution, naked and sterile of reality, of Ike's reality and of the realities the naked bodies would re-robe and return home to. Pornographic material was good for afternoons with other clean things like Pepsi and pretzels. Watching Kyle fuck from between the cracks of a bedroom closet door did not feel clean. It felt like a mess.

It felt like a mess but mostly it felt good.

In fact, so intense these experiences became that Ike dreamt about them, continued to even long after Bebe stopped coming and Kyle spent his last summer in South Park alone. Sometimes, in these dreams, Ike was Bebe and it was Ike's own hips that Kyle sank into. Sometimes Bebe was Ike and Ike would open the closet to unearth her from beneath Kyle's discarded shit and take her out because he knew what it was like to be in there, face striated with lamplight seeping through the hinges and so utterly alone. He would take Bebe's clothes off and touch her so she wouldn't feel sad. For some reason when she was naked she reminded him of his kindergarten teacher.

Mostly it felt good but sometimes it felt bad, plain shitty, and Ike unable to bear it any longer would draw away from the closet-door, ram his hand-heels into his ear-sockets or whatever and just wait, queasy and writhing, for it to be done. Sometimes it seemed like Bebe was also just waiting for it to be done. Sometimes it seemed like Kyle was just waiting for it to be done. On these nights Kyle would twist away to the far side of the bed and put his head into his hands, shoulders still shimmering with perspiration above the bed sheets tangled at his hips, and Bebe would go with nothing more than a breath of fragrance. This scent, of Bebe leaving, Ike remembered with strange relief. Kyle would get up to throw the window open, keel elbows over ledge with his head hung until the sweat dried and he was shivering in only his boxers. From the inner pocket of his backpack he'd retrieve a tin of mints and have two. These mints were yellow. He would sigh deeply into his hands. On these nights Kyle fell asleep with almost alarmingly little delay and Ike would slip from the closet to kneel beside him as he slept, touch his eyelids and cheeks and ears. He'd never wake up.

Other nights Kyle couldn't decide whether he wanted Bebe to leave or stay and Bebe would become vexed and upset and seeing her like this Kyle would become frantic with apology, would pull her in by the backs of her elbows to kiss her and whisper to her. These nights were difficult for Ike because neither Kyle nor Bebe slept well together and always one of them was awake tossing or pacing. Sometimes Bebe would cry and Ike in the closet would try not to listen because if he cried too she might hear. Kyle's bedroom closet would become his prison for the night.

Regardless, the first time Ike ever came, legitimately, was in Kyle's bedroom closet. By that time he was thirteen and had been fooling around under his bedsheets for a while but without any real success until a particularly frustrating night during which, sleep truncated once again by images of Kyle, he'd torn his sweat-soaked sheets away to stumble down the unlit hallway to Kyle's room. Threw open the closet and sank into it panting and pants-less, forehead braced against the back of his hand clutching the shelf of a build-in storage rack. Ike continued to require this environment for the next year or so and even though by the onset of this sexual-incubation-period-or-whatever Kyle had already moved out and was a flight across the country, the memory of him in Ike's veins remained potent enough to render some sooty over-capacitized waste-locker into a freaking venereal nursery.

At the very start of it all Ike wondered if he'd ever be caught, and he was, twice, once by Kyle and once by Sheila.

By Kyle it was on one of the shitty nights, just after the mints phase. On most nights he had only one or two but that night Ike noticed he'd had four. Kyle sat doubled over on the edge of his bed head in arms, hands wrought into his hair which sprung wildly from between his fingers. He looked to be trembling, was the last thing Ike noticed before trying to shift off his leg which had gone numb, upsetting some angular object perched in the wire rack above his head. Ike yelped as it struck him and Kyle when he threw open the closet door he probably hadn't glanced at for years was white with horror.

"What the fuck is this Ike?" he hissed, tearing Ike from the closet, fingers boring into the sides of Ike's head. "What the hell are you doing in here? What the sick fuck is wrong with you?"

Kyle feigned anger but his eyes screamed panic.

Ike though faint with fear had the strangest feeling this had nothing to do with Kyle's sense of modesty but something even more private, untouchable, and knowing this he was too petrified to produce tears, only dry terrified sobs that from another dimension might have sounded like laughter, tried to promise he saw nothing but could not meet Kyle's eyes. For this ill-withdrawn lie Kyle struck him over the side of his head and, having contracted quite the lower-body paralysis from sitting too long in the same position, Ike really couldn't even stand from the base of the wall against which he'd fallen, a weakness which Ike was deathly grateful Kyle misconstrued.

"Holy shit," Kyle whispered, fingers flying to claw blood from his scalp. He took Ike into his arms, pushed the hair from his face and Ike gazed up into vast green eyes above him. "Ike—Ike I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he pleaded. He shook three fingers over Ike's face. "How many fingers am I holding? Ike? Oh my god—I've—I—"

"I'm ok. My legs are just numb."

"I'm so sorry Ike, I'm so—"

Kyle held Ike so tightly it hurt.

"—I'll never hit you again. I swear I'll never—you're my little—and I love you so fucking much and—"

Kyle was crying and Ike almost opened his mouth as if to taste rain. It was like rain to be touched by Kyle, like rain where it never rained. Ike tried to shake his head no, "No, Kyle—don't cry, you didn't do anything—" but he didn't need to for long because within minutes Kyle's eyes glazed strangely over and his speech became like beads slipping from a severed string and he collapsed onto the floor with Ike still in his arms. Ike tried half-heartedly to shake him but thought the better of it, instead pulled the comforter from Kyle's bed to let flutter down over his sleeping form. In morbid curiosity Ike reached splayed-fingered into the dark closet to see what, exactly, had hit him on the head, and discovered it to be a porcelain statuette of a cow Kyle had helped him paint at a Cow Days booth years ago. Ike slept in his own room that night and woke early the next morning with a bruise on his temple that he admired in the bathroom as he washed his face.

By Sheila it was later and at some indiscreet moment Ike was chronologically unaware of but posited must have occurred because she took it upon herself to confront him over a bad brisket with a side of sweet potatoes while Gerald worked late, Ike then sixteen and just graduated from high school. The kitchen table was round, the imprecision of which perhaps discomforted Sheila because she took to seat herself exactly on his diameter.

"How are you Ike." They'd been picking at dinner for a half hour before she spoke; her voice was barely a whisper and she cleared her throat though there were no audible blockages.

Ike pulled a wan smile.

"Have you heard from your brother lately?"

"Yes we talked on the phone for two hours last night. He says he misses your cooking."

"Bubbala."

"If I heard from him I'd tell you."

This was not entirely true.

"Well, I just—" Sheila trifled with her sweet potatoes cooked saccharine. She had not yet even touched the meat and was looking at it with apprehension Ike deemed ungrounded, having confirmed the brisket was bad but not inedibly so, "—you've seemed different, since he's been gone—"

"How so?"

"—and Ike, I… I always wanted to ask what it was like, growing up with Kyle. I mean I know he was always rather—"

She frowned at the brisket, deliberated over a euphemism.

"—spirited." Sheila gnashed her thick fingers and Ike let fly a single, winged brow. "And I'm afraid—was always afraid—that maybe you got the short end of the stick. With regard to, you know. Kyle."

Ike put down his fork to recoil against the back of his chair, fastened his ankle over his knee. "I don't understand what you're getting at."

"I mean did he ever… did he ever make you do things you didn't…" She swallowed, a sheen of perspiration gleaming over her upper lip, and Ike felt suddenly that his pulmonary appliances had jammed. Stone cold but he smiled expectantly, extended a hand that felt stiff and brittle as ice, swiveled it to gesture for her to continue.

"Ike…"

"Yeah Mom?"

"Please. I know it's hard to talk about."

Ike let his face fall solemn, tented his fingers. "It seems like what you're trying to ask is: Did cutie Kylie ever touchy my wee wee?"

"Ike! That's completely inappropriate! D-don't just—"

"Yes?" Ike feigned oblivion. Sheila made to stutter on but he cut her off: "See Mom, I think we both understand that you have a tendency to put two and three together, but this time given the nature of what you're insinuating, I suppose I'll have to entertain you by asking, 'What makes you think that?'"

Under the table Ike's elbows quaked against his sides. He twisted his fingers into the hem of his sweatshirt and heard a thread break. He was nauseous. He forced his face blithe but he needn't have; Sheila was gazing with intense consternation into the seam where her laced fingers met.

"It's because I… You…"

Her eyes glistened with a trauma almost reverent and Ike then felt he might turn black with shame because that was when he knew, knew that she'd seen him—heard him—whatever. He eyed his meat knife, the blade slick with juice from the brisket slain, the exposed center raw and sick.

"I just want to help."

She implored him with shoulders clasped and Ike turned away from a plea for amnesty that could have been no more hostile. He felt the strike of a match in the pit of his stomach.

"The answer is no." Ike's eyes were shadowed and cold, an austerity curated from facades on pain.

There was a moronic earnestness emanating from Sheila that made him writhe.

"He never touched me."

"Ike please."

"He never touched me! Oh don't give me that shit look like I wouldn't _know_." He spat these words, drew them pulsing from a well of rage untouched since it had been drilled into him. "He didn't and if there's anyone who doesn't know anything it's you not knowing how much I fucking wish he would."

At this Sheila slapped him and as he recoiled he upset a drying teacup which shattered over the floor. He made no move to pick up the pieces, for a scalding shiver wanted to strike her back but didn't. The shock in her eyes he could never repent to. Sheila beheld him fearfully, wide body in stance as if regarding a wild dog, as if afraid she had ignited Ike's metaphorical fur or something. Actually Ike felt rather stiff, rather cold.

Cold was how Ike often felt.

"It's not my fault," he whispered.

If Sheila heard this plea he didn't know, didn't care.

He turned away from her, left the kitchen, the festering house. When he hit the steps outside he ran, ran with lungs scalded by air too pure to breathe, ran to everywhere and to nowhere.

 **[7/17/16: UPDATE! Added a bit to this chapter, starting from "By Sheila..."]**

 **7/4/16: It's Monday morning even though I'm really trying hard to update on every Sunday night but ugh, just couldn't get this one out on time. Anyway lemme know what you think, I feel like this chapter is weird. As always thanks for reading!]**


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